Friday, March 20, 2009

Finally - a small step in the right direction. The government is reviewing its multiculturalism spending in an attempt to deny public funds to organizations that promote hate or that praise terrorism:

Jason Kenney: “I think there is a tendency to be a little bit naive in Canada. We’re so self-congratulatory about the success of our model of pluralism and diversity, that surely no one could really mean ill in Canada... We don’t necessarily all subscribe to Canadian values, and we should be willing to recognize those that don’t.”

Not sure how far we can expect the government to go. Of course, if we had a majority government and if we had more of the good old Reform policies in the Conservative policy book - we could see the end of all those "sensitivity training" programs and other nonsense funded with the taxpayers' money. But cutting public funds to extremist organizations and ensuring that "sensitivity training" at our airports is not provided by jihadists - that's a good start.

Although the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney was quick to acknowledge certain challenges:

“Unfortunately, the federal government is a huge, complicated machine. You know, (it has a) $200-billion budget, hundreds of thousands of people, and sometimes not everyone gets the message,” Kenney said.

Well, how about zero-base budgeting then? Instead of just adding new spending on top of what the departments have spent last year (plus the indexation, plus adjustment to population growth,) let's require them to justify all their expenses, including those that were approved for the past fiscal years.

Doesn't that make sense? Instead of having to go through thousands of expense items for every single department, make the departments come to you with the lists of expenses which they want to see extended for the upcoming fiscal year. Instead of explaining the departments (or organizations) why they can no longer have certain public grants, let the departments and organizations explain you why do they still need that money. I agree - a Federal government is a huge, complicated machine. So wouldn't it make sense to make everyone do their share of the work, rather than doing all the work alone?

Not to mention that abolishing needless spending could slash some $10B from the upcoming deficit, ensuring Canada's return to balanced budgets as early as 2011.